This invention relates generally to systems for facilitating and encouraging online purchases by providing a personal URL to direct a user to a personalized ecommerce webpage.
Transaction cards, stored value cards, or gift cards, as they are commonly called based upon their intended use, have become popular gifts. Gift cards typically comprise a stored value card whereby a certain cash equivalent value is encoded upon a magnetic strip applied to the surface of the card. This stored value may be determined by the vendor prior to packaging and display for sale or may be selected at the point of sale by the purchaser and loaded by the cashier using a magnetic card reader/writer. As an alternative to a magnetic strip, a transaction card may use a bar code to link the card to an account by which the associated value is stored in a computer database. Gift cards are typically provided with a generic and impersonal design, typically identifying the associated merchant for which the card may be used to purchase merchandise, and therefore are not personalized in view of the intended recipient. Gift card holders may be used to augment the gift of a transaction card by providing a surface for displaying decorations, images, or messages.
Gift cards are often presented for sale on display racks in stores, each card or packet of cards being hung upon a display stand peg. It is also known to provide a selection of gift cards for purchase online through a commercial website. Such websites may allow an online purchaser to select among gift cards offered by a plurality of vendors, make selections as to monetary value, and direct transmittal of the selected gift card or cards to the address of an intended recipient.
A uniform resource locator (URL) may be created to reflect the identity of a specific party identified with a specific website or webpage. This personal uniform resource locator (PURL) will typically take the following form: http://<party name or other selected personal identifier>.<domain name (typically the name or identifier of the owner of the domain)>.<com, net, biz, org or other top level domain>. A PURL may be used as a means for providing a customized or personalized web address without creating a separate domain.